JeanL why do you quote that article? it is very old (1960s) and the chronology of BB ceramic has been heavily modified since then

Well, it is one of the few articles online that I have found that deals directly with the Bell Beaker presence in the Pyrenees and adjacent territories, but if you feel that major discoveries in the area have been done, please you are welcome to share the information.

PS: As far as I know, they haven't found any other type(other than type III) of Beaker ceramics in the Basque+Navarran territory, so his conclusions regarding that, still hold true.

In fact, what the article sutains is that Basque is much closer to PIE than has ever been considered so far. what can mean anything really. The author dismiss the second posibility, that Basque contains a significant input of Indo-European words, that entered the language at a very early period, so that they underwent typically Basque opaque changes., but I am sure Jean Manco would like that and have an explanation for it.

Either way, it takes some explaining. Very few people see proto-IE as being anywhere other than in the east. Does this imply Basque was somehow in a vanguard of movement west after PIE had happened? There is a hazy phase of ill defined spread of IE tendancies in the pre-beaker phase. I wonder if some group on the extreme periphery of the PIE world in the east spread west. I wonder if the Basque langauage could have been a little less separated in time, origin and direction of spread from the IEs as is normally suggested. It would make a lot of sense to me if Baque if less 'exotic' than often portrayed.

Awhile back there was some discussion of the doctoral thesis of Arnaud Etchamendy, "Euskera-Erderak: basque et langues indo-européennes : essai de comparaison", from Pau University, 2007.

The paper is in French, so I haven't read it, but it was talked about on Rootsweb:

I think a short translation is required. Shortly, the thesis is that the correlations found between Basque and IE languages can't be coincidences or traces of short contacts with IE populations. Rather, Euskara would be a true IE language from a separate branch.

Apparently there were some issues with some of the words they used. Throughout history linguistics and historians have tried to link Basque with about every other language out there. I simply can't even access the thesis because the site given is down, and it is nowhere to be found online, so I don't know up to what extent they actually proved something, or if it was simply yet another failed attempt.

The most famous attempts were done by Arnaiz-Villena who tried to link Basque, Berber, Ibero-Tartesian, Guanche, Etruscan, Minoan, Hittite amongst others in what he calls Usko-Mediterranean languages. Of course it is worth noticing, that he is “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs”, and that his works have been heavily criticized, mainly for the usage of HLA antigens to make wild claims such that Greeks are related to Ethiopians and Sub-Saharan Africans, and that is why they don't cluster with Europeans in the MDS-HLA tables. However, even in his MDS tables one can see that the genetic distances do not support his arguments. Here is a fragment of some of the criticism directed at him:

Quote

Arnaiz-Villena and Jorge Alonso-Garcia claim to have used Basque to decipher many of the ancient languages of the Mediterranean and Middle East which are known to be unrelated to Basque,[33][34] including Egyptian, Hittite, Sumerian, Hurrian, Ugaritic, Akkadian/Babylonian, Elamite, and Phoenician, all of which they claim have been misidentified and mistranslated by the world's linguists and epigraphers for a century. They characterize mainstream research as "science fiction stories".[35] Arnaiz-Villena's Egyptian translations, for example, include the cartouche of the bilingual Rosseta Stone in which Champollion identified the name of Ptolemy; in Arnaiz-Villena's interpretation it does not include that name, so that it is actually Arnaiz-Villena who deserves credit for deciphering the hieroglyphs.[36] Similarly, in Arnaiz-Villena's interpretation the Code of Hammurabi contains "no hint of laws" but is a Basque funerary text,[37] and his purported Basque material proper includes the Iruña-Veleia graffiti, which had been identified as modern forgeries by a multidisciplinary team[38] half a year before his decipherment was published.[39] They also claim to be able to read poorly attested languages such as Etruscan, Iberian, Tartessian, Guanche, and Minoan, which no-one else has been able to decipher with any certainty. They posit that these are all part of a "Usko-Mediterranean" branch[40] of the speculative Dené–Caucasian language family, which they extend to include the Berber languages of North Africa.[12][41][42][43] This thesis flatly contradicts basic Egyptological, Sumerian, Semitic, Indo-European, and Mesoamerican scholarship. Phoenician, Akkadian/Babylonian, Ugaritic, and Eblaite, for example, are transparently Semitic languages, and Arnaiz-Villena excludes the rest of the Semitic languages from his family; Egyptian and Berber along with Semitic have been demonstrated to be Afro-Asiatic, and generations of linguists have been unable to find a connection between Berber and Basque or Afro-Asiatic and Basque; and Hittite is widely acclaimed as a key in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, which Arnaiz-Villena acknowledges is completely unrelated to Basque.

De Hoz says their work "lacks the slightest value and is contrary not just to the scientific method but to common sense", and "is an unmitigated disaster which in principle should not be reviewed", but that he does so because it was published using public funds by the respected Editorial Complutense, which might give it undeserved credibility. He calls this a "crime" against legitimate research which has gone unpublished for lack of funds.[44] Pichler likewise describes the "decipherment" of the Canary Island inscriptions as "comic", pointing out that Arnaiz-Villena "translated" an inscription of the alphabet as if it formed words (starting with "fire deceased earth prayer" in Basque), and also found it amazing that the university would publish his books.[45] The "Basque" words he translated into are themselves dubious, including some that are modern neologisms and some that are loanwords from Romance languages, such as bake (from Latin pace "peace"[33][46]), and which therefore can say nothing about ancient Basque connections. Lakarra, taking as a sample the list of 32 items entitled "Lenguaje religioso-funerario de los pueblos mediterráneos", provided by Arnaiz-Villena and Alonso as evidence for their decipherment, calculates that of the alleged Basque roots proposed by Arnaiz-Villena and Alonso, 85% are faulty or spurious, sometimes "verging on the clumsiest falsification", while even the remaining 15% is unclear.[47]

^Oh on the contrary, I wound't dismiss his ideas out of hand either, I'm simply saying that without reading it, I can't really give any opinions regarding the veracity of the paper. I would actually be fascinated if Basque turned out to be an archaic branch of Indo-European. Although I think it would bring more questions that answers though.

PS: I was simply stating that there have been numerous attempts to link Basque to about every other language out there, even Na-Dene languages.

^Oh on the contrary, I wound't dismiss his ideas out of hand either, I'm simply saying that without reading it, I can't really give any opinions regarding the veracity of the paper. I would actually be fascinated if Basque turned out to be an archaic branch of Indo-European. Although I think it would bring more questions that answers though.

Same here.

I would be interested in a comparison of Euskara with the Anatolian IE languages, since they are considered to be especially archaic. According to Anthony, anyway, some linguists consider them to be descended from a "Pre-Proto-Indo-European" ancestor shared in common with PIE (the "Indo-Hittite" hypothesis).

Perhaps Euskara shares that same ancestor and is itself a third major branch (now much reduced, but once more widespread), along with PIE and Anatolian.

Suppose for a minute that Etchamendy is right, and Euskara is an archaic form of Indo-European. Suppose that it forms a third branch off of "Indo-Hittite" (Pre-Proto-Indo-European) with PIE and Anatolian. Perhaps we have been wrong in thinking of the IE Urheimat as either the PC Steppe or Anatolia. Perhaps instead there was a kind of Pontic complex for the early development of Indo-Hittite, from which PIE, Euskara, and Anatolian would spring, that included the entire Black Sea region.

For people who knew the use of boats, the Black Sea would be more of a facilitator of movement, trade, and communication than an obstacle. Coasting is fairly easily done, even with relatively primitive craft.

I hesitate to mention Euphratic, but I think the possibility that it actually existed has to be taken into consideration.

The idea that everything about the origin and development of Indo-European is known and all wrapped up and done is premature, to say the least.

Suppose for a minute that Etchamendy is right, and Euskara is an archaic form of Indo-European. Suppose that it forms a third branch off of "Indo-Hittite" (Pre-Proto-Indo-European) with PIE and Anatolian. Perhaps we have been wrong in thinking of the IE Urheimat as either the PC Steppe or Anatolia. Perhaps instead there was a kind of Pontic complex for the early development of Indo-Hittite, from which PIE, Euskara, and Anatolian would spring, that included the entire Black Sea region.

For people who knew the use of boats, the Black Sea would be more of a facilitator of movement, trade, and communication than an obstacle. Coasting is fairly easily done, even with relatively primitive craft.

I hesitate to mention Euphratic, but I think the possibility that it actually existed has to be taken into consideration.

The idea that everything about the origin and development of Indo-European is known and all wrapped up and done is premature, to say the least.

I think reading between the lines if it is distantly related to IE then it would be a totally separate branch from Anatolian.

If you think about it the idea of absolutes in languages whih some black and white contrast between IE and the rest is probably missing a lot of completity. Even the steppes alone had a number of localised cultures in hunter-gathering times. I think it much more likely that there was a continioum of languages but most have gone extinct. For example I have heard it said that the hunter-gatherers of NW Anatolia had a culture that strongy resmebled those on the west shore of the Black Sea and as far as the Crimea and that is from a very recent book on prehistoric Anatolia. So, I would not be at all surprised if there were lost languages which sort of blurred into each other. PIE and Anatolian were just two phases of this but there is bound to have been a more blurry picture in geographical and chronological terms. I would not be surprised if NW Turkey and parts of the non-steppes west Black Sea and even round to Crimea had languages prior to PIE and Anatolian that were of the same basic branch or distant cousins with a common root say 8-10000 years back. If Basque falls into that category somehow then it would raise some major questions. IMO too it would still mean Basque arrived from the east in post-glacial times rather than being in situ since the LGM. However, we could do with some linguist giving an estimate of period of separation. I am not a linguist but I suspect its not one of Basque in the western reguge and the ancestor of IE in the eastern one, something that would be a huge time depth nearer 18000 years if not more. It does raise the possibility of Basque as some sort of earlier and/or western-peripheral fission from the east. Perhaps a vanguard sort of thing from a shunting effect. If you think about it a 'Basques were not so different' model does fit the DNA which does make them look much different from their neighbours.

^If(This is a very big if) Basques were to be found an archaic branch of proto-Indo European it would still create problems, because one would expect their R1b(Assuming PIE=R1b at least for the West portion) to have branched off the tree earlier, just as Anatolian is mostly R1b-L23(xL51), however we know that Basque are mostly R1b-P312, so what do you make of it?

If you think about it a 'Basques were not so different' model does fit the DNA which does make them look much different from their neighbours.

Basques do lack(or show very small frequencies-i.e. less than 1%) the E3b/G2a/J1&J2 combos that are found elsewhere in Iberia, although Iberia for the most part is still mostly R1b. On the autosomal level they also seem to lack the Caucasus, Southwest Asian, North African that appears in other Iberians, or the Caucasus that appears in other Europeans.

The Basques do have the "Gedrosia" (West Central Asian) autosomal component, however, whatever that really means.

I think autosomal dna is very tricky when it comes to making ancient connections, not that it has no value. It is recombinant and subject to the rules of dominance and recession, which makes what is retained over the long haul a real crap shoot.

For example, I have a 64/67 y-dna match with a man with my surname, which means we probably share a common ancestor in the 17th or 18th century. Yet we do not match on FTDNA's Family Finder. On the other hand, I have autosomal matches at least that old on other lines: luck of the autosomal draw.

^If(This is a very big if) Basques were to be found an archaic branch of proto-Indo European it would still create problems, because one would expect their R1b(Assuming PIE=R1b at least for the West portion) to have branched off the tree earlier, just as Anatolian is mostly R1b-L23(xL51), however we know that Basque are mostly R1b-P312, so what do you make of it?

If you look at that problem, however, it is not so much a y-dna problem as it is linguistic: How and why did the Basques retain their use of that archaic branch of Indo-Hittite (using that term for the parent language of PIE, Anatolian, and Euskara, if Euskara is to be included), instead of adopting one of the languages that stem from PIE, as most of the rest of P312 did? Or how did most of the rest of P312 come to speak languages that stem from PIE?

There are a number of possible answers. I don't know which is the right one.

Here are some thoughts on possibilities.

1. The y-dna line that led to P312 was speaking an IH (Indo-Hittite) language ancestral to Euskara when P312 was born. Among the Basques, that language became Euskara. The other branches of P312 later adopted languages stemming from PIE. It could be that the branch of IH that led to Euskara was the same branch that led to PIE.

2. Euskara is not really genetically (in the linguistic sense) related to IE at all. Either P312 is not especially IE or the Basques were once not so P312 as they are now, and Euskara originated among I-M26 men.

3. P312 did not originate in the West but back in or very near to the old Pontic Complex homeland of IH. Some P312 tribes spoke the Euskaran branch of IH. Others spoke PIE or Anatolian.

Whatever the answer is, I still don't think you have part of R-L23 holed up in the FC Ice Age Refuge during the LGM.

2. Euskara is not really genetically (in the linguistic sense) related to IE at all. Either P312 is not especially IE or the Basques were once not so P312 as they are now, and Euskara originated among I-M26 men.. . .

While I am thinking about it, I would like to address item #2 above, because it comes up as the answer quite often, especially the "Euskara is not really genetically (in the linguistic sense) related to IE at all . . . P312 is not especially IE . . ." part.

Leaving the "P312 is not especially IE" part behind for now, let's look at the second part, which deals with how a people who are now mostly P312 could come to speak a non-IE language, if Basque is truly non-IE.

Here again are some enumerated possibilities.

1. Euskara-speakers were once something other than predominantly P312, say, I-M26. Over time, through admixture, they became predominantly P312. They retained Euskara perhaps because they had some female-centered customs, like matrilocality, and/or beliefs that made the transmission of languages to children a female function.

2. An IE-speaking, mostly P312 people came to speak Euskara through contact with or elite dominance by a more advanced, Euskara-speaking people.

We tend to neglect the second possibility above because we think of IE-speakers as the eternal conquerors, dominating all who get in their way. Yet IE hasn't always won every linguistic contest everywhere it has gone. Look at modern Hungary, which is now Magyar-speaking, and at Anatolia, which is now mostly Turkic-speaking, for examples. If the second possibility listed above is right, then the I-M26 component in the modern Basque population could represent the survival of the original Euskara-speaking y-dna lineages, just as N-whatever represents the survival of the original Magyar-speaking y-dna lineages in Hungary, and C3(?) represents the surviving Turkic-speaking y-dna lineages in Anatolia.

The difference between the situation in Hungary or Anatolia versus that in the Basque Country is that in the former we have the benefit of documented history. In the case of the Basques, we don't really know what happened.

The author dismiss the second possibility, that Basque contains a significant input of Indo-European words, that entered the language at a very early period, so that they underwent typically Basque opaque changes., but I am sure Jean Manco would like that and have an explanation for it.

Yes indeed. My favoured theory is that the ancestor of Basque was spoken in the Cucuteni culture. But I'm not sure that I should cite that document. Seems to be unpublished and the only comment on it dismisses it as a crackpot work. I think I'm better off just citing the -ko suffix similarity, which even the sceptical Larry Trask accepted, and the Basque word for "silver" adopted into certain IE languages a long way from Iberia - and interestingly the very ones that seem to have sprung from cultures amalgamating Yamna and Cuctuteni settlements.

The Basques do have the "Gedrosia" (West Central Asian) autosomal component, however, whatever that really means.

Yes they do have the “Gredosia” component, as do all NW Europeans, in fact I was one of the first to notice the peak of Gredosia over Caucasus in Basques and NW Europeans. But the thing is that, it was just in one experiment(K12b) that they showed the Gredosia component, and they point I was referring to still stands, that Basque are indeed different from their neighbors; while Basques show from 9.1% to 9.5% Gredosia and 0% Caucasus, NW Europeans for comparison show from 9.5% to 13.1% Gredosia and from 0 to 3.6% Caucasus, other Iberians show from 5.1% to 7.3% Gredosia, and from 8.8% to 14.2% Caucasus . In other experiments such as K10a they show 0% West Asia, while all their neighbors show some varying degree of West Asian going from 3.3% in Aragon to 5.6% in Galicia, and NW Europeans also show West Asian in the order of 5-7%. Meanwhile in other weac2 experiments done by Dienekes Basques appear as a mixture of 74.7% to 75% European component and from 24.8% to 25% Near Eastern, for comparison NW Europeans appear from 80.7% to 83.4% European and from 13.2% to 16.1% Near Eastern, and Iberians appear from 62.4% to 68.2% European and from 29.8% to 34.5% Near Eastern. The problem with all of this, is that one cannot take the labels of the components literally, because they might contain other alleles.

2. Euskara is not really genetically (in the linguistic sense) related to IE at all. Either P312 is not especially IE or the Basques were once not so P312 as they are now, and Euskara originated among I-M26 men.. . .

While I am thinking about it, I would like to address item #2 above, because it comes up as the answer quite often, especially the "Euskara is not really genetically (in the linguistic sense) related to IE at all . . . P312 is not especially IE . . ." part.

Leaving the "P312 is not especially IE" part behind for now, let's look at the second part, which deals with how a people who are now mostly P312 could come to speak a non-IE language, if Basque is truly non-IE.

Here again are some enumerated possibilities.

1. Euskara-speakers were once something other than predominantly P312, say, I-M26. Over time, through admixture, they became predominantly P312. They retained Euskara perhaps because they had some female-centered customs, like matrilocality, and/or beliefs that made the transmission of languages to children a female function.

2. An IE-speaking, mostly P312 people came to speak Euskara through contact with or elite dominance by a more advanced, Euskara-speaking people.

We tend to neglect the second possibility above because we think of IE-speakers as the eternal conquerors, dominating all who get in their way. Yet IE hasn't always won every linguistic contest everywhere it has gone. Look at modern Hungary, which is now Magyar-speaking, and at Anatolia, which is now mostly Turkic-speaking, for examples. If the second possibility listed above is right, then the I-M26 component in the modern Basque population could represent the survival of the original Euskara-speaking y-dna lineages, just as N-whatever represents the survival of the original Magyar-speaking y-dna lineages in Hungary, and C3(?) represents the surviving Turkic-speaking y-dna lineages in Anatolia.

The difference between the situation in Hungary or Anatolia versus that in the Basque Country is that in the former we have the benefit of documented history. In the case of the Basques, we don't really know what happened.

The only problem I see with that hypothesis is that in the Basque+Northern Navarra+Gascon region the diversity of R1b-P312 indicates an older presence in the region than they diversity of I-M26. But whatever(if any) change took place amongst Basque, it must have been completely male-sided, because unlike other places in Europe, we see little change in the mt-DNA profile of Basque all the way from early Neolithic down to Bronze Age and modern day. The other problem with this, is that it would indicate that Sardinians spoke a Basque related language, and thus far their languages has been linked to Iberian moreso than Basque, and the Iberian regions seem to lack heavily in the I-M26 department.

Whatever the answer is, I still don't think you have part of R-L23 holed up in the FC Ice Age Refuge during the LGM.

Neither do I, I noticed you keep bringing that up, and even assigning it to the hypothesis I’ve proposed, so I’m going to take this opportunity to once more, make one thing clear. I proposed that R1b in its M269 and likely L23 derived form was widespread in Europe prior to the Neolithic arrival, in fact I doesn’t even need to be widespread, it could have been sitting around the Northern portion of the Balkans or Western Romania. With the arrival of the Neolithic in the Balkans, that is 8000 ybp, not during the LGM, the R1b populations are separated, one takes refuge in the Steppes, the other one(The one that gives rise to all R1b-L150+ clades) is driven to the Western most parts of Europe by the agriculturists, they get holed up in Western Europe, but not during the LGM, but during the early Neolithic. I hope that makes it clearer.

2. Euskara is not really genetically (in the linguistic sense) related to IE at all. Either P312 is not especially IE or the Basques were once not so P312 as they are now, and Euskara originated among I-M26 men.. . .

While I am thinking about it, I would like to address item #2 above, because it comes up as the answer quite often, especially the "Euskara is not really genetically (in the linguistic sense) related to IE at all . . . P312 is not especially IE . . ." part.

Leaving the "P312 is not especially IE" part behind for now, let's look at the second part, which deals with how a people who are now mostly P312 could come to speak a non-IE language, if Basque is truly non-IE.

Here again are some enumerated possibilities.

1. Euskara-speakers were once something other than predominantly P312, say, I-M26. Over time, through admixture, they became predominantly P312. They retained Euskara perhaps because they had some female-centered customs, like matrilocality, and/or beliefs that made the transmission of languages to children a female function.

2. An IE-speaking, mostly P312 people came to speak Euskara through contact with or elite dominance by a more advanced, Euskara-speaking people.

We tend to neglect the second possibility above because we think of IE-speakers as the eternal conquerors, dominating all who get in their way. Yet IE hasn't always won every linguistic contest everywhere it has gone. Look at modern Hungary, which is now Magyar-speaking, and at Anatolia, which is now mostly Turkic-speaking, for examples. If the second possibility listed above is right, then the I-M26 component in the modern Basque population could represent the survival of the original Euskara-speaking y-dna lineages, just as N-whatever represents the survival of the original Magyar-speaking y-dna lineages in Hungary, and C3(?) represents the surviving Turkic-speaking y-dna lineages in Anatolia.

The difference between the situation in Hungary or Anatolia versus that in the Basque Country is that in the former we have the benefit of documented history. In the case of the Basques, we don't really know what happened.

The only problem I see with that hypothesis is that in the Basque+Northern Navarra+Gascon region the diversity of R1b-P312 indicates an older presence in the region than they diversity of I-M26. But whatever(if any) change took place amongst Basque, it must have been completely male-sided, because unlike other places in Europe, we see little change in the mt-DNA profile of Basque all the way from early Neolithic down to Bronze Age and modern day. The other problem with this, is that it would indicate that Sardinians spoke a Basque related language, and thus far their languages has been linked to Iberian moreso than Basque, and the Iberian regions seem to lack heavily in the I-M26 department.

That's actually not a problem at all - just the opposite - for the I-M26 elite dominance or contact model for the transmission of Euskara.

It's also not really that much of problem for the other scenario either, the one in which an original Euskara-speaking I-M26 population gradually becomes mostly P312 via male-vectored admixture. The number of I-M26 lineages would have naturally been reduced to far fewer than had once existed, reducing the apparent age of I-M26 in the region.

Whatever the answer is, I still don't think you have part of R-L23 holed up in the FC Ice Age Refuge during the LGM.

Neither do I, I noticed you keep bringing that up, and even assigning it to the hypothesis I’ve proposed, so I’m going to take this opportunity to once more, make one thing clear. I proposed that R1b in its M269 and likely L23 derived form was widespread in Europe prior to the Neolithic arrival, in fact I doesn’t even need to be widespread, it could have been sitting around the Northern portion of the Balkans or Western Romania. With the arrival of the Neolithic in the Balkans, that is 8000 ybp, not during the LGM, the R1b populations are separated, one takes refuge in the Steppes, the other one(The one that gives rise to all R1b-L150+ clades) is driven to the Western most parts of Europe by the agriculturists, they get holed up in Western Europe, but not during the LGM, but during the early Neolithic. I hope that makes it clearer.

My mistake. I apologize. So we are actually far closer in our opinions than I thought.

You have R-M269 (possibly R-L23) arriving (or originating?) in SE Europe in the Mesolithic Period.

With the arrival of the Neolithic in the Balkans, that is 8000 ybp, not during the LGM, the R1b populations are separated, one takes refuge in the Steppes, the other one (The one that gives rise to all R1b-L150+ clades) is driven to the Western most parts of Europe by the agriculturists, they get holed up in Western Europe, but not during the LGM, but during the early Neolithic. I hope that makes it clearer.

I think having demonstrated from many years that this happened in Italy and when (soon) they will find here the aDNA you all should believe.

Whatever the answer is, I still don't think you have part of R-L23 holed up in the FC Ice Age Refuge during the LGM.

Neither do I, I noticed you keep bringing that up, and even assigning it to the hypothesis I’ve proposed, so I’m going to take this opportunity to once more, make one thing clear. I proposed that R1b in its M269 and likely L23 derived form was widespread in Europe prior to the Neolithic arrival, in fact I doesn’t even need to be widespread, it could have been sitting around the Northern portion of the Balkans or Western Romania. With the arrival of the Neolithic in the Balkans, that is 8000 ybp, not during the LGM, the R1b populations are separated, one takes refuge in the Steppes, the other one(The one that gives rise to all R1b-L150+ clades) is driven to the Western most parts of Europe by the agriculturists, they get holed up in Western Europe, but not during the LGM, but during the early Neolithic. I hope that makes it clearer.

Is there any evidence of a Mesolithic population being shunted west about 6000BC? From memory one slightlly mysterious group who appeared a little ahead of the Neolithic (and of uncertain origin) in Italy and France is the Castelnovian which seems to have run from NW Italy across the southern third of France to the piedmont of the Pyrenees. It has been suggested that the Roucadourian Neolithic of SW France is descended from this culture. Maybe this group are the people who became the Basques. Generally they were on the peripheries of the Cardian zone when it arrived and clearly were stubborn hunters not farmers. Now I wouldnt chose to associate then with R1b but others might.

JeanL why do you quote that article? it is very old (1960s) and the chronology of BB ceramic has been heavily modified since then

Well, it is one of the few articles online that I have found that deals directly with the Bell Beaker presence in the Pyrenees and adjacent territories, but if you feel that major discoveries in the area have been done, please you are welcome to share the information.

PS: As far as I know, they haven't found any other type(other than type III) of Beaker ceramics in the Basque+Navarran territory, so his conclusions regarding that, still hold true.

Yes they have. To start Bosch Gimpera chronology is completely out of date, since he thought that BB originated in Andalusia.In the Basque Country different types of BB ceramics have bneen found, in fact in La Atalayuela site they are found in the the same horizon.In Pagobakoitza and Gorostiaran also hibrid of Maritimo and Cordado styles have been found.There is a summary of the present situation of the investigation in the Basque Country by Alfonso Alday Ruiz, if you want I can send you the PDF

^If(This is a very big if) Basques were to be found an archaic branch of proto-Indo European it would still create problems, because one would expect their R1b(Assuming PIE=R1b at least for the West portion) to have branched off the tree earlier, just as Anatolian is mostly R1b-L23(xL51), however we know that Basque are mostly R1b-P312, so what do you make of it?

That is the basic problem in a nutshell. I tend to think of L23* as potentially associated with the Anatolian break off. It would seem to fit on a number of levels. The only get out clause would be if OTHER L23* headed west and loitered there for a millennium or two and then gave birth to L51 then L11 and subsequenly the L23* root pretty well dissapeared in the west. However using that amount of wriggle room makes it bordering on meaningless.